The Linear Tape Open (LTO) formats Generations 3 and 4 use error-correcting codes (ECC), which are based on a 2-dimensional product code. The C1-code is arranged along the rows of the 2-dimensional array. It is an even/odd interleaved Reed-Solomon (RS) code of length 240 giving rise to a row of length 480. The C2-code is arranged along the columns of the array. It is a RS-code of length 64 and dimension 54. The codewords are 2-dimensional arrays of size 64×480 and they are called subdata sets in the LTO standard. It is anticipated that future generation of drives will write on more than 16 tracks simultaneously. However, all current generations of LTO formats (Gen-1 to Gen-4) are based on the above C2 coding scheme which, together with its associated interleaving, cannot accommodate future tape-drive systems that will support heads with 16, 24, 32 or 48 (or other multiple of eight) transducers/sensors per head to read/write 16, 24, 32 or 48 (or other multiple of eight) concurrent tracks, respectively.